Capítulo 24: Chapter 24: The Stalwart Squire
Lionel Johansson left me to my own devices, and while I waited for the Crusader to come within orbit around the planet of Carmarthen, I felt impatience growing inside me.
"Can't we just teleport to the Crusader like the first time you brought me there?"
"When the Crusader comes within range, we will teleport aboard the bridge. Right now, the Crusader is out of teleportation range."
"Oh?" I raised an eyebrow at Aegis's reply. "How is it that you can teleport across entire star systems, but we can't teleport to a cruiser's bridge even though he's in the same system?"
"First of all, I make use of a special technology called the quantum spatial-dimensional transference. It is not meant to teleport living beings, and indeed, it will be impossible for anything to transfer through quantum spatial-dimensions without having the appropriate systems integrated within them. Secondly, you also need a quantum pair of yourself to be on the other side – and I'm not talking about a clone or splitting yourself off. It also involves installing the same transference technology I mentioned earlier, which is not suitable for living organisms."
"I…I see."
"Anyway, you should inform your partner about your plans. I assume you intend to bring her along?"
"Yeah." I wasn't stupid enough to leave Lin Xue behind on Carmarthen. Even though she wouldn't be stuck here forever and could still return to Earth through the portal once the nanotechnology had completed the setup and transfer into the Order's fortress in the central continent, it was what would happen after her return that I was worried about. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I wasn't about to risk incurring her wrath.
Also, abandoning a comrade behind and returning home yourself was just mean, and I wasn't a nasty person. I could hear the comment section mocking me, demanding that I get rid of Lin Xue because she was "useless" but…those edgelords were just delusional. She had been nothing but helpful in my past battles, her lightning gun indispensable and providing me much needed cover or making up for my lack of firepower.
Those edgelords insulting her as useless would probably get slaughtered in less than three seconds if they were in her place, facing against a powerful enemy. Honestly, I had no idea where they had the face to condemn other people when they had never had to put themselves in the line of fire and risk any danger throughout their pathetic lives. Keyboard warriors were simply warriors in name only, but they didn't deserve that title.
In any event, the Crusader took only a few hours to get within teleportation distance. The moment Aegis informed me, I rushed to bid Lionel Johansson and Rex Luther farewell. Of course, I also hurried over to where Lin Xue was and shared the good news.
"We're going home?" She asked in wonder. Originally, she had thought it would take longer because Lionel Johansson had ordered the portal dug out of the ground and brought back to his fortress. He didn't want such a dangerous tool be left lying around in the middle of nowhere, and intended for it to be guarded closely.
Aegis had concurred with him, and thus she reprogrammed the nanotech to render the portal portable so that the Order could transport it back home.
Lin Xue was going to protest against it, requesting that the Order allow us to teleport through the portal before they took it apart, but I assured her that we had an alternative route home.
"Huh? How?"
"You'll see tomorrow. I was going to have to tell you about my starship and show you around anyway."
"Starship?! YOU HAVE A STARSHIP?!"
I pretty much ran away from her and hid in my tent after that, so that I didn't have to deal with her questions. Now, though, I had to look for her.
"Starship!" She exclaimed the moment she saw me and stretched her hands out like a toddler. "Starship!"
…had her vocabulary been reduced to a single word upon suffering from immense mental shock when learning that I had a starship or something?
"Yes, starship. It's time to say goodbye to Carmarthen and go home."
"We're going home?"
"Yeah." She finally said something other than starship, so there was hope that her mental incapacitation was temporary.
A few seconds later, we were on the bridge. I showed her around, but she ended up running around the bridge and peering at each and every station, fascinated.
"This really looks like it came out of a science fiction story!" She exclaimed in wonder, her eyes wide. "And I thought the toys and stuff the Department of Sprue came up were technologically advanced! All of these are ahead of whatever we invented by at least several hundred years!"
She then turned to me.
"You never told me you had a starship!"
"I just told you yesterday…"
"I mean before that! For the past three days I thought we were going home through the portal! You never told me anything about starships!"
"Well, now I'm telling you."
"Don't mind if I look around?" Lin Xue was already turning around and running off the bridge, eager to explore the rest of the interior. I sighed and watched her go before turning back to Aegis, who had installed herself back at her previous station. Arondight too had separated from her and inserted himself in a different console.
"Let's grab the frigate and then go home. How long do we need to return to Earth from this system? Another three days?"
"Yes," Aegis replied. "We are approximately ninety-six light years away from the Sol system, so the trip will take about sixty-eight hours and forty-one minutes."
"Ninety-six light years?" I sighed and shook my head in wonder. "Terran Empire ships really are capable than faster than light travel. How do you do it? I'm guessing you use an Alcubierre drive?"
"I am impressed, Commander. Your conjecture is very accurate. We do use a variant of what you Earthlings call the Alcubierre drive, a technology that allows us to warp space around a vessel and allow it to reach its destination within a time period that is less than it would be for light to cover the same distance."
"In other words, you expand space behind the vessel and maybe contract space in front of the ship." I nodded. "A warp drive. Within the protective bubble, the ship moves relative to close to light speed but never exceeding it, thus not breaking Einstein's law of nothing ever being able to move faster than light. But because space is an exception – the universe even today continues to expand at speeds faster than light as a result of the Big Bang – you are able to achieve the effect of faster than light travel by manipulating it, as opposed to simply attempting to accelerate the ship past light speed. That theory was first conceived by Miguel Alcubierre in the 1994…at least for Earth, anyway."
"You are very…knowledgeable about the topic, Commander."
"Ha ha, well…" I scratched my head, embarrassed. "The Alcubierre Drive appears in much of the science fiction novels I've read. I learned about Miguel Alcubierre from my favorite science fiction military author, Ian Douglas."
"I see."
"Still…" I frowned and glanced around the bridge, my eyes resting on a holographic screen that displayed the growing image of a frigate. It was similarly shaped to the Templar class cruiser, but smaller – about half his size, a little sleeker and presumably faster. Like the Crusader, the frigate was thin and long, just over a kilometer in length from stern to aft, and resembling a slender fortress with plasma engines at the back. The little brother of the Templar class cruiser.
"That's a Squire class frigate, the Stalwart," Arondight supplied helpfully. "It was abandoned by all hands millennia ago and left drifting in the void. If we can reactivate it, we can bring it back to Sol system and conduct full repairs with nanotechnology."
"It appears we'll have to use the Crusader's complement of nanobots," Aegis said. "I will have them begin the replication process."
"Nanobots are self-replicating," Arondight told me. "But they have safety protocols programmed into them to prevent over replication. We can temporarily override them, and they have a set maximum cap imposed upon them."
"I'm guessing it's to prevent the grey goo scenario," I muttered.
"Correct. But even so, there are cases where even those safety protocols fail and the nanobots go out of control."
"Scary." I shuddered, not wanting to think too much about it. Instead, I changed the topic.
"Oh, there has been something that's been gnawing on the edge of my mind." I paused and looked up the console informing me of the Templar class cruiser's faster-than-light capability. The warp drive, or so it was simply translated for ease of use, though I suspected it had a much longer and more complex official name. "I can roughly surmise how you came to be capable of faster than light travel, but the communication signals…that's a different story. Aegis, if we are ninety-six light years away, how exactly did you communicate with the Crusader instantly? No matter what signals you transmit, they can't travel faster than light. Unlike a starship, they aren't enclosed within some bubble while space expands behind them."
"Quantum pairing," Aegis replied. "Or quantum entanglement. I told you earlier that my main components were here before they were transferred to Carmarthen using quantum spatial-dimensional technology."
"Yeah. Oh, come to think of it, teleportation was immediate too. But the question is how you communicated instantly with your other components ninety-six light years away. Oh, wait…quantum entanglement? Is it the theory by John Bell where you have two particles that are linked to each other, and causing a change in one particle will induce an instantaneous response in the other no matter how far away they are? Even if they are billions of light years apart?"
"That's correct. The quantum spatial-dimensional transfer makes use of that principle…and also applies to quantum communication, allowing for messages to be delivered and exchanged across vast galactic distances instantaneously."
"Wow. It's almost like magic." I shook my head, overawed. Once again, I was reminded of Arthur Clarke. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, or so his saying goes.
"The Holy Terran Empire is leaps and bounds ahead of anything your Earth-based civilization is capable of producing."
"Aren't we supposed to be descendants from Terran Empire colonists?" I tried not to roll my eyes at Aegis's proud declaration. She didn't respond, instead, drawing my attention back to the Stalwart. The Squire class frigate looked like he was a wreck, drifting in space unpowered, with a cloud of debris having formed a ring around him like a silent graveyard. I swallowed. "Damn, that looks bad."
"It is, but I've run some scans," Aegis said. "I propose that we inject half of the Crusader's complement of nanobots and allow them to self-replicate within the Stalwart and begin enacting repair protocols. The engine can still be salvaged, allowing the Stalwart to travel back to the Sol system alongside the Crusader. We will prioritize that first, and then continue with full repairs later. Complete repairs will take anywhere between three weeks and a month. To be honest, I would prefer docking the Stalwart in a dedicated orbital shipyard for repairs and restoration from the ground up, but we will have to improvise with our extremely limited resources."
"With your permission, of course, Commander," Arondight added. "You will need to authorize this action. We cannot execute it without human authorization."
I wondered if that was why the Squire class frigate was left here to die. The complement of nanobots aboard the ship, bereft of authorization, simply shut down and died along with the Stalwart. At least, unlike a human, the Stalwart could still be resurrected. Personally, I was not excited about acquiring a new frigate – I was hoping for something bigger, but I guess a battleship was too much to ask. That said, any ship was better than no ship at all, and I welcomed the new addition, certain that he would make a huge difference in future void combat.
Especially with the Saurians breathing down our necks…
"Do it," I ordered, just in time before Lin Xue came onto the bridge. "Let's bring the Stalwart home and bring him back to life."
Aegis and Arondight carried out my orders without hesitation, the Crusader docking alongside the Stalwart. A frigate might not seem much, but his addition to my fleet was a step in the right direction.
I just had to continue making many more steps.
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